Is LIfe Unique to Earth or Ubiquitous in the Universe? I debated this subject with the UK's Top Chemist, Professor Lee Cronin who takes the position that life is common and even ubiquitous in the universe. Lee even suggests ways to locate and detect the presence of life and account for its information content through a serious of rubrics he and his colleagues call "assembly theory". I am less sanguine and you'll hear why. Check out my conversation with Lee last year: "What is Life?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNAW8fZE1tk He is a prolific Scientist and public intellectual. He was born in the UK and was fascinated with science and technology from an early age getting his first computer and chemistry set when he was 8 years old. This is when he first started thinking about programming chemistry and looking for inorganic aliens. He went to the University of York where he completed both a degree and PhD in Chemistry and then on to do post docs in Edinburgh and Germany before becoming a lecturer at the Universities of Birmingham, and then Glasgow where he has been since 2002 working up the ranks to become the Regius Professor of Chemistry in 2013 aged 39. He has one of the largest multidisciplinary chemistry-based research teams in the world, having raised over $35 M in grants. He has given over 300 international talks and has authored over 350 peer reviewed papers with recent work published in Nature, Science, and PNAS. He and his team are trying to make artificial life forms, find alien life, explore the digitization of chemistry, understand how information can be encoded into chemicals and construct chemical computers. http://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/cronin/ This is a cross-post of a debate held on Curt Jaimungal's Theories of Everything YouTube Channel” Please subscribe to Curt's Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoriesofEverything TIMESTAMPS: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:04:59 Brian Keating's opening statements 00:08:21 Lee Cronin's opening statements 00:13:45 Why defining "life" is difficult 00:23:43 Disagreements on the origin of life 00:38:12 The definition of Entropy is "wrong" (controversial claim) 00:51:44 The universe is filled with life 01:09:20 Will the James Webb Telescope find life? No. 01:12:37 An answer to the Fermi Paradox 01:24:26 Assembly Theory overview (important, watch this first!) 01:38:00 Curt claims Lee's definition of life is circular 01:46:37 Finding UFOs, as an academic project 01:54:26 Lee's gripes against the Galileo Project and Avi Loeb 02:03:47 Curt's views on the UFO videos that have been released 02:08:30 Brian's and Lee's books and talks 02:12:54 Time is more fundamental than space (another controversial claim by Lee) 02:17:45 Eric Weinstein says UAP data should be given scientists... should it? 02:21:53 [Tom Poles ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC8yIU7gE5w

Join Eric (@EricWeinsteinPhD) and Prof Dan Green (twitter.com/nu_phases) live in the chat! We'll discuss the state of physics -- both theoretical and experimental -- and ways to make progress in the future. Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join ? Watch my most popular videos:? Neil Turok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt5cFLN65fI Frank Wilczek https://youtu.be/3z8RqKMQHe0?sub_confirmation=1 Eric Weinstein vs. Stephen Wolfram https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI0AZ4Y4Ip4?sub_confirmation=1 Sir Roger Penrose: https://youtu.be/AMuqyAvX7Wo Noam Chomsky: https://youtu.be/Iaz6JIxDh6Y?sub_confirmation=1 Sabine Hossenfelder: https://youtu.be/g00ilS6tBvs Avi Loeb: https://youtu.be/N9lUceHsLRw Follow me to ask questions of my guests: ?‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating ? Subscribe https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 ? Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/mailing_list ✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php ?️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcast A production of http://imagination.ucsd.edu/ ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piMQbBJqKAE